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MediaWiki
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MediaWiki is a free software for wikis written in PHP. It is the
software used by Wikipedia and other projects of the
Wikimedia Foundation (Wiktionary, Wikibooks, etc). It had a
great expansion from the year 2005, existing a great number of
wikis based in this software that do not have relationship with
this foundation, although do share the idea of a colaborative
generation of contents. MediaWiki is under a GNU General
Public License.
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MediaWiki may be installed on web servers: Apache, Internet Information Services, Cherokee,
Hiawatha, LiteSpeed Standard (needs the extension Math),nginx and lighttpd. And can use
database motors MySQL / MariaDB, PostgreSQL and SQLite.
History
MediaWiki was formerly originally for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske, with the aim of replacing
UseModWiki as wiki motor (called Phase I by the collaborators of Wikipedia). The first
MediaWiki version was then called "Wikipedia software phase II".
Around the middle of 2002 the program was re-written and improved, giving the so called
"phase III" and it has been developed since then from that code. On August 29, 2003 the
program was named MediaWiki, a play on words with the name of the Wikimedia Foundation
which sponsors its development. The first version with this name was then called "MediaWiki-
stable 20030829". They began thinking on possible users that are not party of Wikipedia,
improving especially aspects like the software installation.
The name "MediaWiki" is occasionally criticized for being easily confused with the name of the
foundation by people who are not party of Wikipedia.
In itself the manage of MediaWiki is very similar to that of Wikipedia. As a difference with
classic wikis, page names should not be in CamelCase, thus allowing more natural names.
· Namespaces: Allow to separate pages of different kinds. There is a namespace
for article,
another for templates, another for debates, etc. which the software handle differently.
· Talk pages: Every page has a talk page, to discuss about the main page.
· TeX support: To visualize mathematical formulaes. The formulaes
may be shown in
several ways according to the possibilities of the browser.
· Tracking lists: To let the users to follow the changes in the articles
of interest.
· A system of plugins that allow to extend easily the software. The installed
plugins are
automatically listed in "Special pages".
· Ability to block temporarily users or pages.
· Support for templates customized with parameters.
· Creation of timelines with wikicode
· Hierarchical system of categories, which allow to create lists of articles
or image
thumbnails.
· Admits several user levels, likewise the posibility that only logged users
may edit, or
prevent the registration of more users. Thus, it may be used as a content management
system or groupware.
· Support for the store of virtual memory or cache, also known as memcached
and the
Squid cache system.
· Skins customized for every user.
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